Amherst College - Griffithshttps://www.amherst.edu/taxonomy/term/14451
enThe Epic and the Russian Novelhttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2011fall/collegerow/epic/node/361437
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">By Adam Gerchick ’13</span></p>
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<div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img src="/media/view/361215/original/147920150.jpg" alt="147920150" title="147920150" class="image original" height="200" width="300"></span></div>
<div class="mediainline" style="text-align:center;"><span class="fine-print">Professors Griffiths (left) and Rabinowitz</span></div>
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</tr></tbody></table><p><span class="drop-cap2">G</span>riffiths: “Stanley is an extraordinary teacher and does untold harm to his students, which you find out you can get away with.”<br><br>Rabinowitz: “I learned a few things from [Griffiths] too, but you listen to his version!”<br><br>Rick Griffiths and Stanley Rabinowitz dispensed with the formalities years ago. In an academic partnership spanning more than three decades, Griffiths, the Class of 1880 Professor in Greek and professor of women’s and gender studies, and Rabinowitz, the Henry Steele Commager Professor and professor of Russian, have explored the often-overlooked relationship between the great epics of classical antiquity and modern Russian literature. <br><br>This year, that partnership has led to the publication of their second book on the subject, <em>Epic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak</em> (Academic Studies Press). Exploring the classical inspiration for such works as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s <em>The Brothers Karamazov</em>, Boris Pasternak’s <em>Doctor Zhivago</em> and Leo Tolstoy’s <em>War and Peace</em>, the professors’ new book continues their unlikely collaboration and innovative—and, at least initially, controversial—work.<br><br>Griffiths and Rabinowitz began their joint effort in earnest in spring 1977, when the two then-junior professors co-taught the colloquium “National Epic,” which, like their books, explored the epic origins of Russian novels. In 1990, the professors co-authored <em>Novel Epics: Gogol, Dostoevsky, and National Narrative</em> (Northwestern University Press).<br><br>Critical reception was mixed. The two had taken an unorthodox approach: Rather than offering an encyclopedic study on the history of Russian epic, they selected specific novels of interest and wrote in laymen’s prose. “Some people liked it and thought it was very productive, and others thought it was just too nontraditional or too experimental, or, basically, irresponsible,” Rabinowitz recalls: “‘How could you dare do this when you didn’t mention this, that and the other thing?’”<br><br>Their detractors were unsparing. As Griffiths remembers, “Some of the negative reviewers told us, ‘Give up the project. Don’t try to revise it; don’t try to save it. You’re doing a disservice to mankind.’”<br><br>Rabinowitz one-ups him: “One said that he had heard of the New Criticism—very disparagingly, ‘the New Criticism’—‘but the New Illiteracy!’ And that’s what we were.”<br><br>Nonetheless, many academic readers praised the book, and the professors found support among the Amherst faculty and administration. The Dean of the Faculty’s Office funded the book’s translation into Russian, published in 2005.<br><br>Then, at an Amherst symposium a few years ago, a Yale professor approached Rabinowitz to commend him on the original book and note that it was hard to find for sale. That inspired Griffiths and Rabinowitz to create a new, expanded edition, with three additional chapters based on articles they’d written. They published the longer edition, <em>Epic and the Russian Novel</em>, this year. <br><br>Rabinowitz credits the academic atmosphere of Amherst with enabling the collaboration: “This is not the kind of teaching or kind of project or writing that I would ever have imagined doing if I had been at a university. Some of these people who wrote these scathing reviews might have been sitting on the tenure committee saying, ‘This will not do. You’re out of here.’ On the contrary, Amherst was quite accepting. They love this kind of stuff.”</p>
<p><span class="fine-print">Photo by Rob Mattson</span></p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/971">russian</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1577">classics</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2532">Stanley Rabinowitz</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5877">Frederick Griffiths</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/8312">Rabinowitz</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14451">Griffiths</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14452">Rick Griffiths</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16212">epic</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/361437" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:46:01 +0000kdduke361437 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2011fall/collegerow/epic/node/361437#comments“The Best Toga Party on Campus”https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2011fall/inthesetimes/togaparty/node/361415
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">By Emily Gold Boutilier</span></p>
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<div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img src="/media/view/361246/original/147920450.jpg" alt="147920450" title="147920450" class="image original" height="231" width="154"></span></div>
<div class="mediainline" style="text-align:center;"><span class="inline"><span class="fine-print">Griffiths, in 1983, proves that progress sometimes takes us backward: It’s much harder to make a toga out of 21st-century computer paper.</span> <br></span></div>
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</tr></tbody></table><p><span class="drop-cap2">A</span>t the height of the dot-matrix era, <em>Amherst</em> magazine ran a photo of a man wearing a toga made out of a long, perforated sheet of computer paper, with the caption: “This is rumored to be Professor Griffiths of the Classics Department, who thinks word processing is the best toga party on campus.” <br><br>Presumably, Rick Griffiths was being funny on purpose, but over the years, the magazine has run several tech stories that are funny only in retrospect. Take, for example, a 1978 article about “the college’s academic computer, an IBM 1130, and the administrative computer, a Univac Series 70.” In addition to describing, in elaborate detail, the air conditioning system required to cool these two machines, the article reported that there are no computer science courses at Amherst because “students can get it on their own” and “it’s not particularly consistent with the idea of a liberal arts education.” (Tell that to today’s computer science department.)</p>
<p>In 1994, it was news when an Amherst president read his email. Reprinting an <em>Amherst Student</em> report, the magazine revealed that President Peter R. Pouncey “finally checked his electronic mail on October 19.” Pouncey’s reaction: “The notion that I am going to be nailed down here fielding the frivolities of all comers seems a little distasteful.” One student’s take: “Pouncey seems like more of a person-to-person talker.” A year later, a news item proudly proclaimed that “Amherst Athletics has entered the world of Cyberspace,” meaning that its homepage (with its mile-long URL) would post scores and highlights weekly. <br><br>In the prescient category is a 1966 feature by G. Ernest Anderson ’50, who, decades before Facebook and identity theft, worried about privacy in an age of electronic records. “Perhaps,” he wrote, “the confidentiality question is really one of insuring that an individual may have a ‘clean slate’ at various times in his life—that a machine records system will allow the vicissitudes of youth to pass gracefully into oblivion as manual records do today.” <br><br>Also lasting is the observation that Sarah Auerbach ’96 made in “Click Here for Employment.” The 1996 article—which described “the World Wide Web” as “a subset of Internet machines (sites) that serve up textual and graphical information (pages)”—reported that students are using the Internet to find jobs, and that alumni can, too. </p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/310">Email</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/366">internet</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/474">e-mail</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/888">computer science</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1033">computers</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2983">peter pouncey</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3813">Peter R. Pouncey</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5877">Frederick Griffiths</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/8121">Amherst College history</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/10404">Auerbach</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/10406">Sarah Auerbach</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14451">Griffiths</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14452">Rick Griffiths</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/361415" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:46:28 +0000kdduke361415 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2011fall/inthesetimes/togaparty/node/361415#commentsOffice Space: Rick Griffithshttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/officespace/rg/node/275815
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><i><a name="top"></a>Professor of Classics and Women's and Gender Studies Rick Griffiths has been a bit of a nomad over the past few years. After having offices in Grosvenor House and Converse Hall, he's settled into a new space tucked between geology professors' offices in the Earth Sciences and Natural History Building. "I don't have tools or rocks like they do ... I have tchotchkes." Explore his puppets, books, stand-in parents and total lack of classical pottery (there's a reason) below. <br></i></p><p>To navigate the 360° image below, click and drag to move around or click the "+" or "-" buttons to zoom in and out. Clicking on any object's number will bring you to the explanations below. You must have QuickTime installed to view this image. If you don't have the plug-in, you may <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">download</a> it for free.</p><p>Please note that the image is very large and may take a few moments to load.</p><table class="gradient-background" align="center" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5"><tbody><tr><td><object height="520" width="500"><param name="src"><param name="scale"><param name="autoplay"><param name="controller"><param name="pan"><param name="tilt"><param name="fov"><param name="hotspot1"><param name="hotspot2"><param name="hotspot3"><param name="hotspot4"><param name="hotspot5"><param name="hotspot6"><param name="hotspot7"><param name="hotspot8"><param name="hotspot9"><param name="hotspot10"><param name="name"><param name="bgcolor"><embed height="520" width="500" name="rg_final" src="/media/view/275814/original/rg_final.mov"></object></td></tr></tbody></table><p> </p><table class="gradient-background" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275828/original/Object_10.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_10" title="Object_10" width="248" height="300" align="center"></span></td><td><p><b><a name="1"></a>Item 1: Daedalus and <i>Pasiphaë<br></i></b>Pasiphaë, the queen of Minoan Crete (left), wanted, as Griffiths puts it, to "date" a bull (not pictured). She asked Daedalus to build her a hollow cow—an enterprise that ended in the birth of a mythical creature. "That's [the story that] lies behind the Minotaur," Griffiths explains. "It's from a broken home. You can see the sign of pain on his face." (See Object 9.) <br><br><a href="#top">Return to the top of this page.</a></p></td></tr><tr><td><div class="mediainline" style="text-align:center;"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275824/original/Object_06.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_06" title="Object_06" width="300" height="300" align="center"></span></div></td><td><b><a name="2"></a>Object 2: Zack Yorke '03 painting</b><br>Griffiths purchased this painting from Zack Yorke '03, who created it as part of a senior thesis. It's one of three student creations adorning his office (aside from the stacks of papers that, we're told, partially covered his desk before this story was photographed).<b> </b><br><br><a href="#top">Return to the top of this page.</a> </td></tr><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><div class="mediainline" style="text-align:center;"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275827/original/Object_09.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_09" title="Object_09" width="300" height="158" align="center"></span></div></div></td><td><p><b><a name="3"></a>Object 3: The Dead Poets</b><br>A sort of loosely defined "Dead Poets Society," including Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf, clings to the front of Griffith's desk. Queen Elizabeth I joins the crew at bottom center, and, according to Google, she does in fact meet the two membership requirements of the Dead Poets Society. <br><br>The ovals, Griffiths explains, are simply to add color to an otherwise gray surface. After a day of student conferences, Griffiths found that one of his students had, somehow, arranged them concentrically without Griffiths noticing. "Very creepy," he adds. </p><p><a href="#top">Return to the top of this page.</a> </p></td></tr><tr><td><div class="mediainline" style="text-align:center;"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275831/original/exhibit_back_3truck.jpg" border="0" alt="exhibit_back_3truck" title="exhibit_back_3truck" width="300" height="236" align="center"></span></div></td><td><p><b><a name="4"></a>Object 4: Jessica Mestre '10 Photo<br></b>This print, by Jessica Mestre '10, was part of a year-long exhibit of her photography in Frost Library. Mestre, a former student in Griffith's First-Year Seminar, gave him the print when she took the exhibit down. "I love the detail [of the truck]," Griffiths explains. "It goes with all the toys in my office."</p><p><a href="#top">Return to the top of this page.</a> </p></td></tr><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275830/original/Object_01.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_01" title="Object_01" width="300" height="240"></span></div></td><td><p><b><a name="5"></a>Object 5: Bead Animals <br></b>In a building full of geologists with rock samples, tools and artifacts from field expeditions dotting their offices, Griffiths decided to add as many colorful tchotchkes as possible to his. A classicist, he explains, can't take his work home. "Classicists tend not to have any antiquities," he explains. "There's almost no honest way to have them, because the traffic is mostly black-market." These beadwork animals from South Africa (and matching dried flowers) do the trick instead.</p><p><a href="#top">Return to the top of this page.</a> </p></td></tr><tr><td><div style="text-align:center;" class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275829/original/Object_11.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_11" title="Object_11" width="300" height="207" align="center"></span></div></td><td><p><b><a name="6"></a>Object 6: Book Collection<br></b>Griffiths used to keep his scholarly book collection split between his library carrel and home. Now that he works in a building filled with wonderfully sensitive alarms (a child running a bit too rambunctiously down the hallway once managed to set off an alarm in one of the displays), Griffiths is happy to have his collection finally together in one place.</p><p><a href="#top">Return to the top of this page.</a> </p></td></tr><tr><td align="center"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275821/original/Object_03.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_03" title="Object_03" width="218" height="300" align="center"></span></td><td><p><b><a name="7"></a></b><b>Object 7: A Queen and a Mouse<br></b>"This?" Griffiths responds to an inquiry, "this is another queen and an animal." (See Object 9.)</p><p><b><a href="#top">Return to the top of this page.</a> </b></p></td></tr><tr><td><div style="text-align:center;" class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275826/original/Object_08.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_08" title="Object_08" width="300" height="269" align="center"></span></div></td><td><b><a name="8"></a>Object 8: Griffiths' Griffin</b><br>A coworker gave Griffiths this griffin (an incredibly hard phrase to type correctly two lines in a row) as an homage to his name. As an homage to Amherst, it now wears a purple bow.<b> <br><a href="#top"><br>Return to the top of this page.</a> </b></td></tr><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><div style="text-align:center;" class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275820/original/Object_02.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_02" title="Object_02" width="300" height="211" align="center"></span></div></div></td><td><p><b><a name="9"></a>Object 9: Another Queen</b><br>"I was teaching a class in which Queen Elizabeth I figured a couple of times. We read Virginia Woolf's <i>Orlando</i> and then <i>Kiss of the Spider Woman, </i>which is about other types of queens." A student created a print of the queen for Griffiths, which now sits next to its muse and a very pro-Amherst (though, as we learned from Object 1, sullen) Minotaur. <br><a href="#top"><br>Return to the top of this page.</a> <b></b></p></td></tr><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-border image-margin" src="/media/view/275822/original/Object_04.jpg" border="0" alt="Object_04" title="Object_04" width="300" height="215"></span></div></td><td><p><b><a name="10"></a>Object 10: Portable Parents</b><br>"The Portable Parents," Griffiths explains, as he loads in four AA batteries, are a powerful combination. When pressed, Dad gruffly yells that "<i>When I was your age I had to walk to school</i>," then "<i>Shut up and sit down!</i>" and finally "<i>I said No.</i>" Mom, on the other hand, warns in a startlingly shrill electronic voice that "<i>You're going to poke someone's eye out with that thing!</i>" before settling into the classic "<i>It's broken now. Are you happy?</i>" "They're surefire hits in my first-year seminar," Griffiths jokes. A student who missed that day's seminar walked in during the interview and was subjected to the push-button parental berating. The seminar? FYSE-16: "Liberation."<br><a href="#top"><br>Return to the top of this page.</a> </p></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/5877">Frederick Griffiths</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7927">Office Space</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14451">Griffiths</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14452">Rick Griffiths</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/275815" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0000samasinter275815 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/officespace/rg/node/275815#comments